Me before you-thanasia

Louisa Clark stands on the beach with Will Trainor in the new film "Me Before You."

The film adaptation of Jojo Moyes' 2012 novel, Me Before You,
tells the love story of cheerful caregiver Louisa Clark and
disheartened, handsome quadriplegic Will Traynor. What could
be a story about the redemptive power of love instead
insidiously and heartbreakingly ends as Traynor commits
assisted suicide with Clark by his side.

The film begins when Clark is let go from her job as a cafe
waitress and is forced to look for new employment. In her
small town, the only available job is a caretaker position
for a paralyzed man, the wealthy Will Traynor.

At the start, Traynor, 31, is hostile to everyone and utterly
depressed over his disability. Clark, wonderfully portrayed
by actress Emilia Clarke, treats him with kindness and
respect in spite of his harshness. Eventually, the two become
friends. When she overhears Traynor's parents discussing his
plan for assisted suicide, Clark sets out on a mission to
show him that life is worth living.

Their love for one another comes softly. He shows her foreign
films for the first time. She brings him to a classical
concert. To Clarke's delight, he buys her a pair of black and
yellow striped tights for her birthday, her favorite article
of clothing as a child. On a moonlit beach, Clark confesses
that she loves him, and asks him to live.

But Traynor rejects her love for fear that she might one day
pity and resent him. He doesn't want Clark to miss out on all
the things an able-bodied man could give her.

But more than thinking of her, he thinks of himself. He wants
his mobility, his "old self" back. He is determined to end
his own life, even though his parents and Clark beg him to
stay. Without an understanding of God or heaven, he sees no
worth to his deep suffering.

Much of Traynor's decision seems to be motivated by his
definition of living. Before the accident that left him
paralyzed, Traynor was a powerful executive who loved to
travel and play sports. He constantly invalidates Clark's
small-town life. Taking care of her beloved family and
waitressing, two things she enjoys, are seen as "not living."

It's no wonder, then, at the end of the film, he gives her
money to go to college and travel to Paris, unencumbered by
financial constraints or him. "Don't think of me too much- I
don't want you to be sad," he writes her in a letter to her,
as if the avoidance of suffering should be life's ultimate
goal. "Just live," he tells her, as Clark triumphantly walks
through the city. His death - it seems - is not at all a
loss, but ultimately a gain for those who loved him.

St. John Paul II's Love and Responsibility defines what it
means to truly love someone, a definition "Me Before You"
completely misses. John Paul writes, "Love consists of a
commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the
self. Take away from love the fullness of
self-surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and
what remains will be a total denial and negation of it."

To love a disabled person requires great self-sacrifice, but
Traynor does not understand that all love requires sacrifice.
Clark's life with Traynor would have been difficult. But
without it, she loses the gift of him as an unrepeatable,
invaluable, complex human being.

Though Clark initially is against Traynor's suicide, she
eventually goes to his deathbed after a talk with her father,
who reminds her that one cannot control another person's
choices. "Then what can you do?" she asks, distraught. "You
love them," he replies.

Yet truly loving someone does not necessitate supporting all
their choices. Christ showed great mercy to the woman caught
in adultery, yet did not condone her actions. Clark would
have done the far more loving thing by standing firm in her
resolve to be totally uninvolved with the ending of a life.

Traynor dies in a pure white room in a Swiss clinic,
awkwardly making jokes about his own suicide to lighten the
mood. The death is not shown - that would be far too
realistic - and instead, a green leaf symbolically falls to
the ground: a young life cut down in its prime.

Despite appearances, the film does not go out of its way to
justify assisted suicide. If anything, Traynor's pain and
suffering is whitewashed and barely used as a justification
for his actions. All the rhetoric on the morality of his
death is boiled down to simple, relativistic one-liners like,
"It's his choice."

Rather, it seems Traynor's inarguably tragic death is simply
meant to prey on moviegoers' emotions. Indeed, at the press
showing, the promoters handed out boxes of tissues with the
movie's extremely ironic hashtag #LiveBoldly.

Traynor often mentioned that Clark has potential - potential
that he will stifle if he goes on living. "Me Before You"
also had great potential.

It had the potential to show that disabled people are capable
and deserving of love, both romantic and platonic. It had the
potential to inspire able-bodied people to make the world a
more welcoming place for the disabled. It had the potential
to show that people with hardships need not give into
despair, that they are not merely burdens on their loved
ones.

All that potential was lost when "Me Before You" chose to
portray a heartrending love story and a hot-button topic
rolled into one.